Introduction

Space exploration has intrigued the human race for decades, if not centuries. The steady steps taken to build entire social structures on Mars and beyond eludes to what our future might look like. Life Beyond gives us a glimpse of what this might look like, but in an incredibly entertaining and fast-paced action 

Life Beyond is a vast, persistent online game set in the future. In it, players will create entire new societies. They have the power to decide its shape, economies and politics. It will provide the freedom to reflect real human aspects, both positive and negative. It aims to become the flagship title of the play-and-earn MMO genre.

Gameplay

Life Beyond kicks off after humans discover a long forgotten alien remains on Mars, and accidentally trigger a portal that leads to unheard of territories within our universe. Upon discovering an inhabitable planet in another solar system, humans land and send signals to Earth for the rest to come over while they set up the necessary colony equipment. The task is far from easy, since the planet already features creatures that aren’t as welcoming as we thought. The world of Dolos is our new home, and you, alongside everyone else, have a duty to clear all the impending dangers to our colonization and survival on this new planet.

Once your character spawns in Dolos, you are greeted with a customizable apartment in the base. This acts as your home, and where you keep all your equipment, weapons, and other resources necessary for survival. From there, you are tasked with clearing the areas around your base to allow further safe exploration and expansion.

Crafting, building, supplying and expeditions will be key as the players organize themselves and establish economic systems. Expeditions, much like quests, is where players group up together to fulfill certain actions in order to obtain valuable resources and ancient artifacts. Each expedition mixes both aspects shooting down all types of aliens and solving complex puzzles to open doors and clear obstacles 

As you progress through each region, and just before you completely liberate it as Life Beyond puts it, you will be met with what essentially is a boss fight. What makes Life Beyond especially unique is their success in giving each region a different narrative arc to give players a sense of accomplishment once all is said and done.

Progressing through Life Beyond isn’t linked to the player’s avatar. Players can change roles freely. Their property, equipment and weapons largely remain theirs, but certain events can cause players to lose items or require them to carry out repairs on them. 

Crafted weapons and equipment have the potential to become NFTs. Existing items, too, can be modified, also giving them an NFT value. As the game progresses, new weapons and items can be made, using new resources unlocked in each Region.

These items are of incredible value because they dictate your character’s Expertise. Expertise is very much like roles or professions. However, you can’t directly assign yourself a profession, you need to have the right equipment for it. Available professions include Archaeologist, Musician, Mining Engineer, Transporter, among others.

There are countless gameplay mechanisms that we haven’t spoken about yet, including setting up your settlement’s political structure and successfully developing a healthy economic activity. We will get to see more of Life Beyond and its core gameplay features over the next few months.

Review

It is incredibly early to judge Life Beyond, but the Open Alpha in its current state leaves a lot to be desired in terms of balancing and ironing out the kinks. Putting that aside, Life Beyond is an ambitious title that can become one of the biggest time sinks for all web3 gamers looking to fill their MMORPG itch.